Chapel Hill
SCOTTY IRVING’S BIRTHDAY PARTY
NIGHTLIGHTAt age 38, something happened to Scotty Irving. As a one-man sound tribute to Jesus called Clang Quartet, the Triad musician was booked to play an early slot on the first night of the second No Future Festival, the Chapel Hill noise jam that’s quickly become the South’s pre-eminent gathering for atonal essence. At Nightlight, Irving shocked the crowd, writhing with his pedals, cymbals and homemade instruments and converting a crowd that included some of the biggest names in American noise. He’d been performing as Clang Quartet since 1997, slowly developing his sin-defeating show and instruments (like a crutch covered in noisemakers and pick-ups and routed through more noisemakers). He’s been the subject of a documentary short (Jim Haverkamp and Brett Ingram’s Armor of God). But since that night last summer, he’s opened almost every major “noise” show in the Triangle, toured the East Coast, and released a record on one of the best noise labels in the land (RRR). This is his birthday party, and it includes five skronk/ jam/ riot bands and Irving’s agility-as-power duo with Dave Cantwell, The Whole World Laughing. Tell the smiling man in the heavy metal T-shirt “Happy birthday.” It starts at 9 p.m. Grayson Currin
